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Hailing the Helpers

As the availability of Covid-19 vaccines improves, we should take a moment to acknowledge the volunteers who have so generously helped get shots into so many arms. This comes at a risky time because the dual effects of pandemic fatigue and a sense, rightly or wrongly, that its end is in sight have led to many people letting down their guard.

The Shipwreck Rose: Lest Ye Be Judged

In my salad days in Manhattan, my friends and I would play a barroom game in which we judged people by their footwear: a sort of reverse fortune telling in which you observed the sartorial selection and made a Gypsy-like pronouncement about who the wearer was. This was the 1990s. An adult male sporting unscuffed Top-Siders with no socks was judged to be a recent grad of Cornell or Duke — possibly Dartmouth — lately arrived on Wall Street, who still kept a poster of Pamela Anderson from “Baywatch” on his wall.